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(First post is rather long. I'm not expecting the others to quite this long
)
Jin Mantrell: 25 years old. Average height and in good shape with light brown hair and dark brown eyes
It was a lazy summer day and after coming home from work and spending some time channel surfing, Jin reached for the puzzle box again. The box had belonged to his great-aunt, who had spent her life traveling the world, gradually filling every corner of her home with an incredible collection of exotic trinkets and objects. When she had passed away without a will, the family had gathered and gone through her things, taking anything that held a special sentimental value, and giving the rest to charity or the junkyard.
It was there that Jin had taken the box. About twice the size of a shoebox, the exterior was made of beautifully hand-carved wood and it was obvious that a great amount of care and skill had gone into its making. While searching for a keyhole, when he was young he had discovered that the small tiles and wheels on the top moved, almost as if it was some strange combination of a Rubik's Cube and a sliding tile puzzle, but far more complex To make it more difficult, he had no idea of what the end picture was supposed to look like.
His great-aunt had never been able to solve it and honestly had little interest in doing so. She had bought it in a flea market in Turkey just because she liked the way it looked.
He was pretty sure there was nothing inside. The first thing he had done was shake the box, and had heard nothing, but the challenge still nagged at him. 'Why make it so hard to open if nothing is inside?' he thought to himself. He was about to reach for the remote again when he suddenly had an epiphany.
Rushing to his computer, he scanned the top of the box, and painstakingly turned each tile into its own image, allowing him to move them about freely like a jigsaw puzzle. No longer restricted to moving just one at a time, over the next few hours the image began to form. The edges were the most difficult, being mostly a series of geometric patterns, but the center formed the picture of a woman, in chains.
She had a long hourglass figure, with full breasts and hips with a narrow waist and long legs. Long hair was matched by bright eyes on a face that seemed almost ethereally beautiful. If it weren't for the thick chains that bound her wrists and ankles, he might have thought she was a queen or a goddess of some kind.
With the final image at hand, he began the slow process of actually solving the puzzle, which turned out to be harder said than done, hitting several dead ends and being forced to start over several times. It was late into the AM hours, with dinner long forgotten, that he was finally a single tile away from solving the puzzle. Holding his breath, he slid the last tile into place, and heard a soft click from inside.
He slowly opened the lid....and found it to be completely empty. No bright light, no pirate map carved inside the lid, not even so much as a scrap of an ancient "April Fool's!" note. He hadn't expected to find anything, but still couldn't help feeling just a little disappointed. He left the box open on his dining room table and went to his bedroom. He fell asleep almost instantly, wondering what he would do with the box now. Maybe he'd scramble it up again and send it to a friend as a joke. Or maybe he'd just put it into a back room somewhere for his great-nephew to find someday.
(First post is rather long. I'm not expecting the others to quite this long
)Jin Mantrell: 25 years old. Average height and in good shape with light brown hair and dark brown eyes
It was a lazy summer day and after coming home from work and spending some time channel surfing, Jin reached for the puzzle box again. The box had belonged to his great-aunt, who had spent her life traveling the world, gradually filling every corner of her home with an incredible collection of exotic trinkets and objects. When she had passed away without a will, the family had gathered and gone through her things, taking anything that held a special sentimental value, and giving the rest to charity or the junkyard.
It was there that Jin had taken the box. About twice the size of a shoebox, the exterior was made of beautifully hand-carved wood and it was obvious that a great amount of care and skill had gone into its making. While searching for a keyhole, when he was young he had discovered that the small tiles and wheels on the top moved, almost as if it was some strange combination of a Rubik's Cube and a sliding tile puzzle, but far more complex To make it more difficult, he had no idea of what the end picture was supposed to look like.
His great-aunt had never been able to solve it and honestly had little interest in doing so. She had bought it in a flea market in Turkey just because she liked the way it looked.
He was pretty sure there was nothing inside. The first thing he had done was shake the box, and had heard nothing, but the challenge still nagged at him. 'Why make it so hard to open if nothing is inside?' he thought to himself. He was about to reach for the remote again when he suddenly had an epiphany.
Rushing to his computer, he scanned the top of the box, and painstakingly turned each tile into its own image, allowing him to move them about freely like a jigsaw puzzle. No longer restricted to moving just one at a time, over the next few hours the image began to form. The edges were the most difficult, being mostly a series of geometric patterns, but the center formed the picture of a woman, in chains.
She had a long hourglass figure, with full breasts and hips with a narrow waist and long legs. Long hair was matched by bright eyes on a face that seemed almost ethereally beautiful. If it weren't for the thick chains that bound her wrists and ankles, he might have thought she was a queen or a goddess of some kind.
With the final image at hand, he began the slow process of actually solving the puzzle, which turned out to be harder said than done, hitting several dead ends and being forced to start over several times. It was late into the AM hours, with dinner long forgotten, that he was finally a single tile away from solving the puzzle. Holding his breath, he slid the last tile into place, and heard a soft click from inside.
He slowly opened the lid....and found it to be completely empty. No bright light, no pirate map carved inside the lid, not even so much as a scrap of an ancient "April Fool's!" note. He hadn't expected to find anything, but still couldn't help feeling just a little disappointed. He left the box open on his dining room table and went to his bedroom. He fell asleep almost instantly, wondering what he would do with the box now. Maybe he'd scramble it up again and send it to a friend as a joke. Or maybe he'd just put it into a back room somewhere for his great-nephew to find someday.
